


Your love is my turning page (Where only the sweetest words remain)

by agentlukaofshield (lukadarkwater)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, FitzSimmons Secret Santa, Perthshire, Proposals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 17:57:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5595532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lukadarkwater/pseuds/agentlukaofshield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While spending Christmas with Fitz in Scotland, Jemma reflects on how her relationship with him has changed throughout the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your love is my turning page (Where only the sweetest words remain)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to Scientificsimmons on Tumblr! I was her secret santa in this year's Fitzsimmons secret santa exchange and this is my gift to her.
> 
> P.S. The title is from "Turning Page" by Sleeping At Last and is a good song to listen to while reading this :)

Somewhere over the Moors of Scotland, the sun had begun to rise and Jemma Simmons was there to meet it as had been her routine for the past four years.

She stood at the window, watching the fresh morning light paint the snow covered field in front of the cottage a sparkling gold as the lights on the tree next to her twinkled softly. On the stove, the kettle began to come awake itself as the water inside of it began to feel the warmth of its burner while somewhere down the hall, something else lay slumbering. 

Fitz lay in their bed still. His hair crushed against the soft blue pillow while the sheets wrapped around his legs. His hand was stretched out across the bed, reaching still to the place that Jemma had vacated not minutes before.

Even though cuddling with Fitz had quickly become one of her favorite things to do over the past three and half years of their romantic relationship, Jemma knew that he wouldn’t wake up early if he wasn’t required to. So, she had left him there to come out into the kitchen and start making tea as she watched the sun rise.

After all, today was an important day.

When Fitz had first casually asked her if she had any plans for the holidays, she had laughed at him. Being a Shield agent meant a single day off over Christmas - if they were lucky - and back to work by the 26th. However, as she had told him that she didn’t have any plans, he had quietly asked her if she might be interested in spending her days off with him. In Scotland.

At the time, she had assumed that he meant going to see his mother and spending the holidays with her and so she had immediately agreed, being incredibly fond of Mrs. Fitz. Her surprise when they had pulled up in front of the small cottage that they were apparently renting for the next two weeks had been acute to say the least.

She had followed Fitz up the steps and into the kitchen/dining room in a bit of a daze and looked around at the quaint furnishings, trying to hold back the tears that she felt in the corner of her eyes. Fitz had come up behind her while she was taking it all in and wrapped his arms around her waist, nuzzling into her neck as he did so.

“I know it’s not the exact cottage you saw and we’ve only got it for two weeks but…” he trailed off, his voice soft in her ear. “I thought you would still like it anyway.”

“Oh, Fitz,” she had breathed, turning around in his arms to hug him back. “It’s perfect.”

The last couple of days had been the happiest that Jemma could remember. Being tucked away in the remote cottage with Fitz, getting to be domestic with him in ways that she hadn’t been able to do, being away from the stress of work while being free to while away the hours wrapped in his arms, had made a small warm ball of joy settle in her chest.

Fitz felt the same way, showing it in all of his actions. He laughed often and smiled more. He baked for them both, cookies, pancakes, anything and everything he could think of, laughing as he smudged her cheeks with flour and gasping for air as she tickled him in retaliation. A tell-tale spark had returned to his brilliant blue eyes over the past few days, making Jemma remember the nerdy engineer she had befriended back in their first year at the academy.

Her first memory of him had been at their orientation dinner and meet and greet. She had been 17, foreign, and scared out of her mind as she looked around at her much older classmates and wondered why in the world she had agreed to do this. She had shuffled awkwardly around the edge of the room most of the time, smiling and exchanging greetings with the few people that had said hello to her as she desperately tried to will herself to mingle.

Then, the crowd had shifted and she saw him. The curly haired boy was leaning up against the wall next to the gas fireplace, his hands messing with something as he glanced around the room, looking as awkward as she felt. He was handsome, she realized, in a pasty, nerdy sort of way. While he had neither the bulk nor the chiseled jaw lines of some of the other men in the room, his wiry build and blonde tint to his hair drew her eyes to him and she blushed as she realized she was checking him out a little bit (or a lot).

As she was standing there staring at him, it had suddenly hit her that she knew exactly who he was.

She had met with her advisor early that day and, during the older woman’s welcoming speech, had told Jemma about another boy around her age who had been accepted that same year. Leopold Fitz was his name and he was from the UK like she was, though different in that he was from Glasgow while she was from Sheffield. He was a mechanical engineer, had a PHD at 17 (Jemma, who had up until this point been thinking that it was a slight shame that she wasn’t the actual technical youngest acceptant ever into the Academy brightened a bit at the knowledge that she was the youngest acceptant to have two PHD’s), and was widely considered to be one of the most promising new faces, alongside her of course. 

Ever since then, Jemma had been dying to find and meet him. She had come into the program fully knowing that her age and extremely apparent intelligence would set her apart from others, as it had done for as long as she could remember. So, upon hearing about Leopold Fitz, she had felt a small glimmer of relief that she wasn’t going to be alone in her isolation and, if she was lucky, she could become friends with him, getting rid of that isolation completely.

Upon seeing him alone as she was at the party, a boost of confidence had swept through her and she had made her way over to where he was standing.

He didn’t look up as she approached, the thing he was messing with in his hands apparently taking up his full attention. She came up next to him and stood there for a moment, waiting for him to notice her. When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to, she cleared her throat.

His head snapped up and she was taken aback by the color of his startled blue eyes. Jemma had always found her own eye color, common brown, to be rather dull and boring and so, seeing the clear, icy blue of Leo Fitz’s glaze had momentarily shut down her brain a bit.

“Um.” she managed, mentally kicking herself for being distracted by the unique blue eyes that were staring at her in what appeared to be mild shock, “Hi! I’m Jemma, Jemma Simmons.” she extended a hand towards him, plastering a smile on her face.

“Oh, um, I’m Fitz. Well, technically Leo Fitz but everyone just calls me Fitz.” he replied, dropping his eyes to his feet and grabbing her hand in what had to be in the shortest handshake in history, before twisting it back with his other one in front of his chest.

“I know,” she said, the smile never wavering as she tried to make him meet her eyes again, “My advisor told me about you considering we’re the youngest ever to be accepted into the Academy.”

Fitz nodded stiffly, his eyes not leaving his shoes. “Yeah, mine mentioned you to me as well.”

When he didn’t say anything further, Jemma felt her smile falter a bit. Where she had expecting him to be a bit awkward due to everything, she had not expected this cold refusal to interact with her at all. He seemed far more interested in staring at the ground, and twisting his hands together over whatever he had been messing with before than he was in anything she had to say.

“Well, I was just thinking I would introduce myself because we’re so similar and all…” she trailed off, getting only a stiff nod from him before it hit her.

While she hadn’t met a lot of geniuses in her past 17 years, she knew that a lot of them tended to air on the conceited side. They looked down on anyone else because of their intelligence and she suddenly realized that Fitz was probably one of them. No wonder he didn’t want to talk to her, he was probably offended that she had more PHD’s than him and was ignoring her because of it.

Feeling more than a little let down at the loss of the potential ally and friend that she was hoping to gain in Leo Fitz, she quickly excused herself and made a rapid escape to the refreshments table.

Almost 20 years later, Jemma Simmons stood at the window of the cottage that she was renting with Fitz and laughed at the memory. It wasn’t until almost a month after their first meeting that they would be paired together in chemistry and she would slowly unearth the version of Fitz that would become her best friend and eventually, her boyfriend. Had she been able to go back in time and tell her former self that she would one day be in her current situation, she wasn’t sure if the younger girl would have believed her.

“What are you laughing about?” a quiet voice spoke from behind her, and she felt warm arms wind around her waist, pulling her back against Fitz’s warm chest.

“Nothing much, just thinking about how far we’ve come since our first meeting,” she said, leaning back into his embrace and covering his arms with her hands.

He hummed softly in her ears, and she could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke, “It is pretty amusing to think about. Poor 17 year old me, he’d have a heart attack if he knew that we’d end up like this.”

Jemma smiled herself at that, “Yeah, he probably would have. Considering how much he didn’t like me back then and-”

Fitz cut her off by pulling back a little turning her around to face him, “What?”

Jemma blinked in surprise, “You don’t have to hide it, Fitz. I know you didn’t like me very much when we first met but -”

“What? No, Jemma I - What in the world gave you that impression?”

Jemma’s nose wrinkled in confusion, “Fitz, you hardly spoke to me when I introduced myself! It wasn’t until we became partners that we had a decent conversation!”

Fitz laughed suddenly, surprising her, “That wasn’t because I didn’t like you! Christ Jemma, I -” he leaned his forehead against hers, laughing as he did so, “I was just trying desperately to figure out something to say to the beautiful, incredibly smart girl who had just waltzed up to me and stunned me with her smile. I didn’t want to say anything stupid that would make you hate me but, apparently, I didn’t end up succeeding in my goal very much at all.”

“So, all that time, you were just…?”

“I was trying to come up with something impressive to say. Turns out, I failed horribly at that.” his eyes then became incredibly soft as they looked into hers. “I could never hate you, Jemma. Even past me knew that.”

It was Jemma’s turn to laugh, as the information sunk in. “I just… all this time I had been thinking that I eventually just annoyed you into being my friend. I just followed you around long enough for you to accept me or something.”

Fitz laughed too, his eyes sparkling with warmth as he pressed a kiss to her forehead, “Hardly, I felt like I was annoying you by following you around so much. I was thrilled that we were friends, honestly, you were one of the first real ones I ever had.”

“Same for me, it was…” she felt her throat constrict with emotion. “I was just so happy to finally have someone like you around.”

“I felt exactly the same way, I can assure you. Still do in fact,” he said, nodding towards the cottage, “If all this wasn’t any indication.”

“I can thank you enough for all of this, by the way.” she said, stepping slightly out of his embrace to go take the kettle off as it began whistling. “These past few days have been incredible.”

“I’m glad you like it.” he replied, still standing by the window, watching her.

“It’s just so perfect, Fitz. I know it’s not forever, but I just love it here.”

“Well,” Fitz voice had taken on a strange quality and, when she turned around, he was shocked to see him bending down to one knee on the floor. “It could be, if you wanted it to.”

“Fitz,” Jemma breathed, watching as he pulled a tiny box from the small pile of presents under the tree.

“Jemma Simmons, I cannot even begin to tell you how much you mean to me. You’re-” he stopped for a second clearing his throat as he toyed with the small box in his hands, “You’re so incredibly smart, brave, beautiful, and strong and somehow, you befriended my nerdy self nearly 20 years ago and kept me around. These past three years have been the best years of my life and,” he opened up the box and Jemma, who had been drifting closer to him, felt tears rush into her eyes as she saw the diamond ring that sparkled within it. “I was hoping that you would do me the extreme honor of marrying me?”

“Oh, Fitz. Yes! Of course I will!” she managed, tears running down her face.

Fitz stood up with a smile plastered on his face, his own eyes swimming with tears as he pulled up her left hand to slide the ring onto her finger, taking a second to lean down and press a kiss to it before tugging her closer and kissing her on the lips.

When they broke apart, he drew up their twined hands between them and laid them on his chest, just over the place where she could feel his heart beating.

“Merry Christmas, Jemma.”

“Merry Christmas, Fitz.” she said back, stepping forwards to press her forehead against his shoulder and smiling as she felt the pressure of his hand around hers push against the ring that now resided there.


End file.
